How Long Has It Been? (Plus, Meet Lainie!)

It’s time to meet another Baby Gizmo writer! Lainie is one of our newest Baby Gizmo Team Mamas! She lives in NYC with her husband and 2 year old son and is hoping to expand her family in the future! Plus, she’s pretty great!!

Lainie Gutterman, Editor
Before giving birth to her son in 2009 and becoming a stay-at-home mom, Lainie was a founding partner of a Public Relations firm. Lainie describes herself as “a natural born publicist who is constantly spreading the word about new products, activities and events.” When Lainie is not chasing after her son or they are not watching Nick Jr or reading together, she scrapbooks and writes posts for her blog, “Me, Myself & Baby I” at http://babyi.baveo.com. Lainie and her family live in New York City, where she sacrifices living space (but not style) to be in the center of it all in “the city that never sleeps.” (Fortunately, her toddler is a sound sleeper who doesn’t rise until after 9am, on most days.)

We thought her review of the Itzbeen would be a great way to introduce her to all our Baby Gizmo and Rated by Mom friends!

While stroller shopping during my pregnancy with my son approximately 2.5 years ago, a helpful couple with two boys of their own recommended theITZBEEN™.With all the costly items we needed to purchase for the impending arrival of our son, my husband felt this was an unnecessary expense. I love gizmos of any sort, not to mention anything that gives any hope of making my life even the tiniest bit easier, and I tried to sneak it into the cart during yet another shopping trip, but my mother-in-law supported her son and agreed that we did not need this $25 contraption. Fortunately, I did receive the ITZBEEN™ as a gift and it quickly converted my husband into being a believer only days after he became a sleep-deprived dad and started using it.

As every new parent knows, your memory is one of the first things to go when a newborn arrives. The ITZBEEN Baby Care Timer is a multi-purpose tool that helps you remember the basic details of baby care including when your baby was last fed, changed, napped or given medicine. The ITZBEEN has several other helpful features including a nursing reminder switch that easily reminds mom which side baby nursed from last, a soft-glow nightlight to help parents find their way in the dark without waking the baby and a backlit display so parents can read the times and the clock in the dark.

“In the chaos of life with a newborn, it’s reassuring to have a device that keeps track of feedings, diaper changings and the nap schedule. It tells you what you need to do and when so you don’t have to remember. It lets you be on auto-pilot,” said my husband who would constantly ask me, “Did you hit the ITZBEEN™?” or “How long has it been?” As first-time new parents, we would find it fascinating that almost like clock-work, our son would cry when the ITZBEEN™ showed us that it had been close to 3 hours since his last (bottle) feeding. SHOP Itzbeen Here!

Modern technology continues to make advancements and now apps similar to the concept behind the ITZBEEN™ are available for iphones and smart phones, including Baby Activity Logger, named best app for new parents by Good Housekeeping (February 2010). Baby Activity Logger is available on the iTunes App Store for $4.99. Users rave about the charts, graphs and stats it provides when your baby last ate, slept, burped, pooped, spat up, and went potty. Click HERE to check it out!

Babybix lets parents track and share their child’s activities in one place for free! The app keeps track of sleep, pumping, bottles, diapers, journals, firsts, breastfeeding, food, medicine, growth and more! Take a tour of Babybix by clickingHERE

Unlike the Baby Brain app (http://www.babybrainapp.com/) which does not let users pause the feeding timer, parents who use Total Baby app (4.99) praise it for being able to pause for a nursing session, as well as having the added function of tracking doctor appointments, vaccines and other pertinent medical information in addition to the typical diapers, sleep and feedings. It is also possible to view the totals by day and allows users to sync between another iphone, itouch, ipad, etc. Total Baby will help you log and time all aspects of your child’s care through a smart and sleek interface that makes tracking easy and fun. It is also touted by parents of twins and multiple children.

For Blackberry users, BurpBerry(buy online for $5.99) will track your baby’s sleep, nursings/feedings,
diapers, temperature readings and medications given. Plus, it will save a history of all those events. It is even possible to search the history by type of event or date (which you can’t do with a pad of paper). And you can use all these features for more than one baby at a time. Here’s a DEMO.

One thing to keep in mind when debating between the ITZBEEN or downloading an app is that when you leave your baby with a family member or caregiver, you either have to leave your iphone/smart phone with them or they won’t have it to refer to.

How did you keep track of your baby’s feeding, diapering and napping schedule –old-fashioned pen and paper, ITZBEEN™, an app or something else?

Lainie Gutterman - Before giving birth to her son in 2009 and becoming a stay-at-home mom, Lainie was a founding partner of a Public Relations firm. Lainie describes herself as "a natural born publicist who is constantly spreading the word about new products, activities and events." When Lainie is not chasing after her son or they are not watching Nick Jr or reading together, she scrapbooks and writes posts for her blog, "Me, Myself & Baby I" at http://memyselfandbabyi.wordpress.com. Lainie and her family live in New York City, where she sacrifices living space (but not style) to be in the center of it all in "the city that never sleeps." (Fortunately, her toddler is a sound sleeper who doesn't rise until after 9am, on most days.)

2 COMMENTS

I was behind the tech curve and didn’t even know about the Itzbeen! I did use an app, but didn’t find it until my daughter was almost 6 months old, so I went with old fashioned paper and pen at first, which was very annoying, especially for those middle of the night nursings!